Steve_American wrote:@Truth To Power, I'm going to try a different tack to prove that T_P is wrong when he claims that the air is already saturated with GHGs and adding more does nothing.
Geologists have found evidence that borders on proof, that in deep time over 700M years ago, the Earth was in a "snowball" phase. It was almost totally covered by ice or snow down to the equator. This meant that it was very cold because the snow and ice reflected so much of the sun's light and heat back into space. If this is true, then how did such a state end? We know it did end, because we are here now and the Earth in not covered by ice and snow down to the equator.
Gepoligists theorize that if the iceball continues for 10M years then enough CO2 will have been released into the air that it would heat the Earth with a massive greenhouse effect. The amount of CO2 in the air would have been very, very high. It was not washed out by rain because it can't rain when the iceball is in place.
Where the greenhouse effect ended the iceball, it began to rain. This washed to CO2 out of the air, converting it into calcium carbonate, CaCO3, that was washed into the oceans. They got so saturated with CaaCO3 that it precipitated out in enclosed bays and formed layers of limestone 300 feet thick, that still exist. This was before animals evolved, so the limestone has no fossils or worm tracks, etc, in it. You can see in the rock, snowflake like crystals, some are 3 ft across. It is amazing to see.
Now T_P, how can it be that CO2 from volcanoes over millions of years was able to get the greenhouse effect so strong if you are correct that it could melt the ice of the iceball Earth? You claim that at 400p/m of CO2 the air is already saturated with GHGs. Remember, there is very little water vapor because little sublimates or evaporates from the ice because it is so cold.
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I'm quoting myself to give you the context of this new post.
Below a geologist talks about geology. He casually talks about snowball earth.
He talks about how it ended with volcanoes releasing CO2 over millions of years.
Normally, as it rains, small amounts of CO2 are dissolved into the rain drops. This makes it a weak solution of carbonic acid. This eats the rocks very slowly, and flows to the sea carrying a weak solution of various things like CaCO2 (=calcium carbonate). So, the volcanoes add CO2 slowly and the rain washes it out slowly, while slowly eating (dissolving) the rocks.
. . . However, when there is a snowball earth, it rains very little. So, the volcanoes add CO2 but rain can't wash it out. However, the ice/ice sheets are grinding down the mountains and other rocks. This happens much faster than normal erosion from rain, etc. So, the CO2 would build up in the air until there was enough (estimated to be 13% of the air) to begin to melt the ice. Once it got going, it would accelerate to melt almost all the ice in a few thousand years. During this time there would be rain. This would dissolve a lot more CO2 from air that is 13% CO2. This would be a stronger solution od carbonic acid, so it would eat the rocks faster, and the ice left moraines of ground up rocks to eat. So, a lot of calcium carbonate would be washed into the sea. In enclosed bays it could build up to a concentration which would principate calcium carbonate out forming a layer of limestone hundreds of feet thick.
. . . This was before the Cambrian, so no multicellular animals except things like jelly fish maybe. So, there is no reace of worm borrows in these layers of limestone.
So, over the very many millions of years of the several snowball periods, that were all pretty close together in time, a huge amount of rock was worn away. In between snowball periods some new rock could be formed, but it was/could be ground away so the ice could grind on the rock below. So, many miles of rock were ground down. So, 1 billion years worth of rocks were removed, creating the "missing billion years" of rocks and creating the Great Unconformity.
My point is that even all geologists accept the greenhouse theory and how CO2 heats the climate. This adds another huge number of dupes of, or supporters of, the theory of climate change, or as TTP would call it the Climate Change Conspiracy.
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